Abstract: Studies on the US criminal justice system indicate that the focus on
enacting and implementing harsher laws only serves to sustain the cyclical nature of life
that involves prisoners and their children. Children of prisoners have often been
considered as delinquents and candidates for foster care or social welfare placements by
teachers and counselors. The majority of these children will someday become victims of the
same political environment that plagues American society. The first step to stop the
vicious cycle is to acknowledge the children belonging to this social class.

Introduction

Most of the over one million persons incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons on any
given day and the millions more on probation or parole are parents. Although a
considerable body of information has been collected about individuals who have been or are
under some form of criminal justice system control, very little is known about their
children, particularly those under the age of 18. There are approximately 10 million
children in the U.S. who have had one or both parents incarcerated. These children and
youth have little or no voice about who, in the absence of the parent who is the primary
caregiver, will take care of them, or if they will be allowed to visit or communicate with
the incarcerated parent. The children of parents involved in the criminal justice system
have no voice because they are invisible to the larger society.

The national trend to use incarceration to punish even minor offenses guarantees that
children will continue to be adversely affected by policies enacted with no consideration
of the harm done to family systems. There are many complex and interrelated contributing
factors: the intensification of politically motivated "get tough on crime"
rhetoric and the "War on Drugs," public discourse about crime designed to
instilled fear, the enactment of increasingly harsh sentencing laws such as "Three
Strikes," and the ratings-driven media preoccupation with policing and arrests,
leading to public support for a prison-building frenzy. The virtual disappearance of work,
along with stores, transportation, and other components of a viable infrastructure, from
many inner-city communities has resulted in a concentration of poverty that has devastated
neighborhoods and marginalized residents, making them easy first to criminalize and then
to dehumanize.

The original intent of this article was to examine what is presently known about the
children of incarcerated parents. Its scope has been expanded to include the more
realistic continuum of parental crime, arrest, incarceration, release, and recidivism that
children experience and must contend with as their lives are disrupted, and sometimes
shattered. We begin by placing present events into a larger historical and political
context. Available information about the children of incarcerated parents is provided,
followed by a discussion of caregivers, custody, and visitation issues. The next sections
describe what is known about the impact on children of parental involvement in the
criminal justice system, as well as observable intergenerational trends, and then look at
how law enforcement and social service agencies regard and respond to children of arrested
and incarcerated parents. We conclude with interventions that address and alleviate the
problems resulting from parental involvement in the criminal justice system.

Background

In 1990, the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world, five times
higher than France and Germany and over four times greater than Britain's rate (Foote,
1993). California has the dubious distinction of having the largest prison system in the
country and the second largest in the world following China (Ibid.). One out of every
eight U.S. prisoners is incarcerated in the Golden State. In less than 20 years,
California's prison population has exploded by 631%, from 19,000 in 1977 to 139,000 in
1996; over 97,000 persons are presently on parole.(1) An additional 71,000 Californians
were local jail inmates as of April 1996(2) and 400,000 former California jail inmates
were on probation in 1995 (Criminal Justice Institute, 1994).

Changes in mandatory sentencing guidelines enacted during the mid-1970s have led to a
significant shift in public policy favoring punishment over rehabilitation. Passage of the
"Three Strikes"(3) legislation in the early 1990s has taken a decisive step in
making the concept of rehabilitation historically obsolete.(4) To accommodate growing
numbers of felons sentenced under the 1,000 new state laws specifying new offenses and
increased sentences passed by the legislature (Foote, 1993), California has added 20 new
prisons to its original 12 since the early 1980s (CDC, 1994). This represents the largest
prison construction program in the U.S. To house the expected onslaught of new long-term
prisoners sentenced under "Three Strikes," the proposed 1996-1997 California
state budget calls for completing three new prisons, while other bills introduced in the
1996 Legislature authorize construction for up to nine new prisons.(5)

While the construction and filling up of new prisons give the impression that public
safety is being enhanced, the truth is that increasing numbers of the prison population
are nonviolent offenders. Driven in large part by the "War on Drugs," the
percentage of violent offenders newly incarcerated in California prisons actually
decreased from 39% in 1985 to 26% in 1990, while the percentage of drug offenders doubled
from 17.6% to 35% in the same period (CDC, 1991). The most recent national survey of state
prison inmates found that over 60% of inmates in 1991 had been previously incarcerated
(USDJ, 1993).

Incarcerated Californians tend to be disproportionately young, low income, people of
color, raised in single-parent families, with limited education, poor employment skills,
and histories of substance abuse. In 1992, African Americans made up the largest segment
of California prison inmates (33.5%), followed by Latinos (33.1%), whites (28.9%), and
5.5% from other racial and ethnic groups (CDC, 1995a).(6) According to a new study by the
Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, nearly two out of every five (39%) young African
American men in their twenties (in contrast to five percent of young white men) are
presently under some form of criminal justice control in California, representing an
increase from 33% in 1990 (Schiraldi et al., 1996).(7)

Women are among the fastest growing group of prisoners, their numbers having tripled
nationally since 1980 (Bloom et al., 1994). The number of women incarcerated in California
prisons increased nearly eight-fold from 1,100 in 1980 to 8,500 in 1995 (CDC, 1995b).
Nationally, incarcerated women are more likely than men to be serving time for a drug
offense and less likely to have been sentenced for a violent crime. About 60% of
incarcerated women grew up in a single-parent household, and over 40% reported prior
physical or sexual abuse (USDJ, 1994). Over half the women in California prisons are
African American (35 %) and Latina (17%) (Bloom et al., 1994). Seven out of 10 women
incarcerated in California are serving time for nonviolent drug and property crimes; in
1993, one-third were reimprisoned due to parole violations (Bloom, 1995).

The choice to use incarceration as the first line of defense against crime over other
alternatives comes at no small price to Californians. During the prison building frenzy of
the 1980s, the California Department of Corrections (CDC) expanded its $400 million 1983
budget to a multibillion dollar operation in 1995 to 1996 with 37,000 employees. This
growth has come at the expense of other state programs, most notably health, education,
and social services. The diversion of resources from health and human services to this
most severe form of corrections will continue as "Three Strikes" is implemented.

For the children of parents under some form of correctional supervision - whether
arrest, incarceration, parole, or probation - the social, psychological, and economic
consequences of present policies will exact profound harm for years and generations to
come.

Children of Parents Involved in the Criminal Justice System

The minor children of parents under some form of criminal justice system control are
among the most at-risk, yet least visible, populations of children. Though rising
incarceration rates suggest an increasing number of children who have lost one or both
parents to incarceration, very little is known about this highly vulnerable population. A
1992 study by the California State Assembly Office of Research (Lawhorn, 1992) reported:

No precise count exists of the number of children in California who have incarcerated
parents. Data on the number, ages, gender, location, or needs of children of incarcerated
parents are not collected by the Department of Corrections, the Department of Social
Services, or the Department of Education. These children are not recognized as a group by
any state agency or department in California (emphasis added).

A study by the Virginia Commission on Youth (1992) yielded similar results. The
Commission found no information about the number and conditions of children whose parents
were incarcerated, or any statewide systems or service models in place to address the
needs of children who are affected.

Most of the information known about children of people in the criminal justice system
is obtained from surveys of incarcerated populations, the majority of whom - 78% of women
and 64% of men - are parents (USDJ, 1994).

A 1991 study of state prison inmates found that 67% of the women and 56% of the men
surveyed were parents of over 826,000 children under 18 years of age (USDJ, 1993).

A 1989 survey of 5,675 women incarcerated in 424 local jails showed that 68% had a child
or children under 18 (USDJ, 1992).

Six to nine percent of incarcerated women are pregnant when they enter prison (USDJ,
1994; Bloom and Steinhart, 1993), and about 15% have had a baby within the previous year
(McCall et al., 1985).

A 1991 National Council on Crime and Delinquency survey of mothers in jails and prisons
in eight states and the District of Columbia found that 439 respondents had an average of
2.6 children each (Bloom and Steinhart, 1993).

Denise Johnston, M.D., with the Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents in
Pasadena, California, estimates that nationally about five million children under the age
of 18 have one or both parents under some form of criminal justice system supervision
(arrest, incarceration, parole, or probation), out of which about 1.5 million have at
least one parent who is incarcerated. An additional five million children have parents who
are not now under such supervision, but have been in the past. All told, about 10 million
children in the U.S. are affected by current or past parental involvement with the
criminal justice system.(8) Peter Breen, executive director of Centerforce, a nonprofit
agency dedicated to serving families of prison inmates, estimates that 350,000 children
living in California have lost one or both parents to incarceration.(9)

Caregivers of Children of Incarcerated Parents

Children's lives are seriously disrupted when a parent is arrested and/or incarcerated.
Families of incarcerated fathers are more likely to remain intact than those of
incarcerated mothers. Of the approximately 1.5 million children of U.S. prisoners, about
1.2 million, or 87%, of children of male inmates are in the care of their biological
mothers (USDJ, 1993), while only about 20%, or 29,000 children, of incarcerated mothers
are in the care of their biological fathers (USDJ, 1993; American Correctional
Association, 1990). This leaves over a quarter of a million children of incarcerated
parents in the care of grandparents, other relatives, friends, or foster care.

The majority of incarcerated mothers of minor children were the primary caregivers for
their children prior to confinement. Studies of prison and jail inmates have found that
about 70% of female inmates with children under age 18 had lived with their children prior
to incarceration, compared to about 50% of males (USDJ, 1993; 1992).

A 1991 survey of mothers in jails and prisons in eight states and the District of
Columbia found that 17% of children whose mothers were incarcerated were living with their
fathers, nearly half (47%) with their grandparents, 22% with relatives or friends, and
about 7% had been placed in foster care (Bloom and Steinhart, 1993).

The 1989 national "Women in Jail" study reported that half the minor children
of incarcerated women were living with their grandparents, 23.5% were in their father's
care, and 27% were living with other relatives or friends. About eight percent were in
foster or other institutional care (USDJ, 1992).

Custody Issues

In 1991, 10% of women and two percent of men incarcerated in state prisons reported
that their children were in a foster home, children's agency, or institution (USDJ, 1993).
Unlike most children who enter the child protective services system due to parental
neglect or abuse, children of arrested or incarcerated parents become dependents of the
juvenile court and are subsequently placed in foster care if no relative is available to
provide care for them.(10)

The 1980 federal Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Reform Act (P.L. 96-272)
mandates that children who are placed in foster care must either be returned to their
parents or placed with long-term guardians within 12 to 18 months. If neither has
occurred, parental rights can be terminated by the state. Although this legislation was
meant to avoid multiple short-term placements that worsen the disruption for children,
parents with sentences that exceed the allowable time may be unable to comply with
reunification requirements before or after their release (Barry, 1995). Recognizing this
circumstance, many states have held that positive actions on the part of incarcerated
parents, such as maintaining contact with children and following reunification plans, can
avert termination of parental rights.

However, incarcerated mothers whose children are in foster care must overcome numerous
obstacles to maintain their parental rights (Ibid.). Children often go through multiple
placements, making it difficult for mothers to keep up with their current whereabouts
(Kampfner, 1995), a situation that is exacerbated when the social services caseworker does
not maintain timely communication with the mother. Distance, lack of transportation, and
limited economic resources on the part of the caregiver can become insurmountable barriers
for regular or any visitation by children, and are further exacerbated when siblings are
separated from each other. Inadequate family reunification services during incarceration,
and inability to meet contact requirements and statutory schedules for reunification, put
many incarcerated mothers at considerable risk of losing custody of their children
(Johnston and Gabel, 1995).(11)

Incarcerated parents whose children are in foster care must rely on the caseworker
appointed by social services to help them in the process of reunifying with their
children. The caseworker needs to involve the parent in developing a reunification plan
and help the parent meet the requirements of the plan. The caseworker also has a vital
role in allowing visits by the children and notifying the incarcerated parent about child
custody hearings. In practice, however, despite their mandated responsibility to provide
assistance, in practice caseworkers may be opposed to the reunification of a parent and
child (most often due to the mother's prior child welfare history and/or previous drug
history) and thus not communicate with the parent or allow jail or prison visits for the
children (Bloom, 1995).

In addition, the courts may be unwilling to permit parents to use incarceration as a
reason for failure to provide necessary emotional and material support to their children.
Several state appellate court cases have regarded a parent's incarceration to be an aspect
of abandonment, and therefore, a reason to terminate parental rights (Muhar, 1991). At
least 25 states, including California, have termination-of-parental-rights or adoption
laws that specifically pertain to incarcerated parents (Bloom, 1995). Although no studies
have systematically examined the extent of this issue, the Center for Children of
Incarcerated Parents has found that involuntary termination of parental rights occurs
disproportionately among women. About 25% of women offenders whose children participate in
the Center's therapeutic programs lost their parental rights (Johnston, 1992). The
National Black Child Development Institute (1989) found that from 12 to 18% of
terminations of parental rights in African American families occur among incarcerated
parents.

Smith (1995) identified several key factors that lead to termination of

parental rights:

Parental incarceration in facilities at very long distances from where the children
live, lack of transportation, and limited financial resources of caregivers;

Overall lack of prison programs and services to assist parents in developing and
following a reunification plan;

Lack of communication and coordination between foster care workers and corrections
staff;

Lack of joint counseling for parents and children to deal with problems and reactions
related to the separation;

Lack of adequate screening, training, and support for caregivers to support the
parent-child bond and eventual reunification;

Maintaining close family ties during incarceration has been shown to result in
decreased recidivism rates, improved mental health of inmates and other family members,
increased likelihood of family reunification following release, and greater potential for
parole success (Hairston, 1991; Schaefer, 1991). Nevertheless, many incarcerated parents
have infrequent or no contact with their children.

The most recent survey of state prison inmates revealed that while most parents of
minor children had some form of contact, 28% of mothers and 40% of fathers reported never
having called or received a telephone call from their children,(12) 21% of mothers and 32%
of fathers never sent or received any mail from their children, and fully 52% of mothers
and 55% of fathers were never once visited by their children (USDJ, 1994).

Bloom and Steinhart (1993) found similarly disturbing trends in the frequency of visits
from children during the mother's incarceration. Over half (54%) of the 439 mothers in
that study reported that their children had never visited them in jail or prison.
Seventeen percent were visited by their children once a month, 12% every four to six
months, and seven percent once a year or less. Only 10% saw their children once or more a
week. The distance from the child's residence to the correctional facility accounted for
43% of the reasons cited by mothers for having infrequent or no visits from their
children. Fully 61.5% of the children lived over 100 miles from the mother's place of
incarceration. Thirty percent lived 21 to 100 miles away and only nine percent lived
within 20 miles of the correctional facility.

Hairston (1989) reported that nearly one-third of the incarcerated fathers she surveyed
had not seen their children since entering prison and more than half had not seen their
children in the six months prior to the survey. The main reasons given by inmates for the
lack of visits were transportation, escort problems, and opposition by the child's mother
- this last factor due to the large percentage of incarcerated fathers who report not
having an active or ongoing relationship with the mothers of their children. One study of
federal prisoners found that 87% of unvisited fathers chose to relinquish visits from
their children out of shame, embarrassment, and feelings of overall powerlessness (Koban,
1983).

This trend is likely to continue, as has been seen in California, as new prisons are
built in remote, rural areas, at long distances from the cities where children of
incarcerated parents are most likely to live.

Impact on Children

The cycle of parental crime, arrest, incarceration, release, and recidivism is
particularly devastating for children, but no study has as yet directly observed a large
sample of these children. Instead, most of what is known is obtained from information
provided by the children's incarcerated parents or caregivers. The few studies that have
directly examined the children of offenders yield troubling results. Johnston (1995a)
found that of the 56 children identified by their teachers as having the most severe
behavioral and disciplinary problems at school, 80 to 90% had experienced parental crime,
arrest, and incarceration, and 25% had a parent who was incarcerated at the time of the
study.

Researchers have documented a variety of behavioral, psychological, and educational
problems in children traumatized by the arrest, separation, incarceration, and absence of
a parent. The process of forcibly separating children from their primary caregiver
generally ignores the emotional needs of children, who feel vulnerable and frightened
about losing their parent (Kampfner, 1995), and is further exacerbated for siblings who
may have been separated from each other. Caregivers may not allow children to talk about
their feelings or tell others about their parent's incarceration. Sometimes, children are
not told the truth about where their parent really is (Bloom and Steinhart, 1993). Most
children receive little or no emotional support to process their feelings of grief, loss,
anger, anxiety, and fear.

Children respond in various ways, including sadness, withdrawal, low self-esteem,
excessive crying, depression, diminished school performance, truancy, disciplinary
problems, alcohol and other drug use, running away, and aggressive behavior (Sack et al.,
1976; Fritsch and Burkhead, 1981; Johnston, 1995b). Many children, including very young
ones, blame themselves for the parent's absence (Kiser, 1991). Seventy percent of the
children of imprisoned mothers studied by Baunach (1985) were reported to have
psychological or emotional problems. The depression, feelings of anger and fear,
flashbacks, and "survivor" guilt reported in one study by children of women
prisoners have been associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (Kampfner, 1995).

Johnston (1992) identified three characteristics found in most of the children of
offenders with whom she has worked: (1) multiple parent-child separations (lack of family
support), (2) inadequate quality of care (associated with poverty, multiple placements,
etc.), and (3) the stress associated with enduring childhood trauma (experiencing
repeated, in contrast to single or

occasional, traumatic events).

The cycle of parental crime, arrest, incarceration, release, and recidivism seems to
have a cumulative effect that increases as children grow older. According to Johnston
(1995a):

Parental incarceration in the first year of a child's life may prevent the development
of parent-child bonding.

The development of autonomy and initiative in children aged two to six may be
compromised by the trauma of witnessing parental arrest and the loss of a parent due to
incarceration. "The long-term effects of these experiences may be worse at this stage
of childhood...because young children have the ability to perceive and remember traumatic
events, but they cannot process or adjust to trauma without assistance..." (p. 74).

Children ages seven to 10 may have a hard time achieving in school and getting along
with others, precipitating aggressive behavior in reaction to experienced trauma.

While some young adolescents aged 11 to 14 may overcome their parent's absence, poverty,
stigma, and multiple placements, many children act out.

The cumulative effects of parental involvement in the criminal justice system appear in
15 to 18 year olds. "Their experiences have left many with negative attitudes toward
law enforcement and the criminal justice system. The parents of many have served multiple
jail and/or prison sentences and will not reunify with them. A large but unknown
proportion will engage in criminal activity..." (p. 82).

Intergenerational Trends

As each successive generation of children becomes absorbed into a social process that
involves the criminalization of a growing underclass, involvement in the criminal justice
system is increasingly becoming part of the family system for many low-income families,
particularly in communities of color.

A U.S. Department of Justice jail study (1992) found that 44% of women and 34.5% of
males reported having a close family member who served time in jail or prison.

Bloom et al. (1994) found that nearly 75% of women incarcerated in California prisons
had family members who had been arrested and 63% reported having close relatives who had
been incarcerated.

The American Correctional Association (1990) reported that up to 50% of incarcerated
juveniles have a parent who has been incarcerated.

According to the model for intergenerational crime and incarceration developed by the
Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents, children exposed to enduring trauma (such as
parent-child separation, sexual or physical abuse, or witness to violence) produce
emotional responses (sadness, grief, anger) that lead, absent intervention, to reactive
behavior (withdrawal, physical aggression, hyper-vigilance) and become fixed in patterns
that help children to cope (fighting with peers, substance abuse, gang activity,
promiscuity), ultimately leading to crime and incarceration (Johnston, 1995a).

The growing prison culture observed in many low-income, inner-city neighborhoods plays
a big part in assimilating children into what is becoming an intergenerational norm.
Anecdotal information provided by veteran prison guards(13) who recalled prisoners whose
children and grandchildren have been - sometimes even simultaneously - incarcerated
attests to the unraveling of already marginalized families. According to Schiraldi et al.
(1996), "as one travels through many inner-city neighborhoods, the contemporary
expressions and subculture are increasingly being borrowed from the prison yard, a
tangible sign of the 'prisonization' of many communities of color." In other words,
children whose parents or other close relatives have experienced criminal justice system
involvement are environmentally socialized to follow in their footsteps,just as surely as
their more affluent counterparts are prepared for higher education and professional
careers.

Institutional Response to Children of Arrested/Incarcerated Parents

The complex problems resulting from increasing numbers of arrested and incarcerated
parents who are the sole caregivers of young children suggest the need for coordinated,
systemwide approaches. Yet, most law enforcement and child welfare agencies lack both
awareness of the issues and the means to respond to children following the arrest and/or
incarceration of their parents. This conclusion was reached by the American Bar
Association (ABA) Center on Children and the Law (1994) from its national study examining
how law enforcement and child welfare agencies address the needs of this group of
children.

The ABA Children and the Law study found that overall, the agencies responsible for the
emergency and long-term placement of children of arrestees lack specific policies,
procedures, and interagency coordination:

Law enforcement. The majority of jurisdictions interviewed have no specific policy that
police officers follow for emergency child placement following parental arrest, and 43%
rarely even ask an arrestee if they have minor children. Nearly half (49%) do not notify
any other agency upon the arrest of a mother who is a sole caregiver and 54% are not
required to coordinate efforts with notified agencies. Seventy-eight percent said the
police are mandated to report the placement only if they suspect the child was abused or
neglected.

Child protective services. Only 20% of child protective services agencies interviewed
had a specific policy on the placement of children of arrestees. Two-thirds reported
having no formal team approach with local law enforcement with respect to children of
arrestees, and 34% believed that the placement needs of children whose mothers were
arrested are not being adequately met. Most child welfare agencies, already overwhelmed by
increasing numbers of child abuse and neglect cases, lack the resources to meet the needs
of children who are not in immediate danger of being abused. Many social worker
respondents tended to regard the children of arrested parents as being less at risk than
are children who are physically or sexually abused or neglected.

Foster care. A stunning 97% of foster care system respondents reported not having a
specific policy on foster care placement of children of arrestees.

Correctional facilities also lack critical information about inmates. According to the
most recent Department of Justice inmate study, "official records are often
incomplete, are not easily compared across jurisdictions, and lack crucial personal
data" (USDJ, 1993:11). This is clear from survey data collected from Departments of
Corrections throughout the country, which reveal an enormous lack of information about the
needs of female inmates. Out of 43 responding states, 15 had no records on the number of
women who were mothers and/or who had dependent children, and 32 had no knowledge about
how many children would be living with their mothers upon release (Clement, 1993).

Interventions

The multiple or recurrent traumatic events that affect children of parents involved in
the criminal justice system are rarely addressed. These children typically live in poverty
before, during, and after their parents' incarceration, reside in low-quality housing, and
lack the means to visit their parents. Johnston (1995c) describes some models designed to
address and alleviate the problems that result from parental involvement in the criminal
justice system:

Crisis nurseries for very young children, 0 to 6 years of age, are temporary residential
care settings, designed to prevent children's exposure to acute trauma such as parental
arrest, sudden homelessness, or domestic violence. One such program, the Bay Area Crisis
Nursery in Concord, California, provides services for 400 children annually.

Crisis intervention counseling for children following the arrest of a parent can reduce
the immediate and long-term negative effects of that experience, as well as provide
reliable information about the process in which the parent is involved and referral to
sources of ongoing support for family members. No program of this kind currently exists in
the U.S.

Therapeutic interventions to help traumatized children master the effects of current and
previous traumas and overcome future trauma by improving individual coping skills. The
Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents provides community-based therapeutic services
for young children of prisoners through its Early Therapeutic Intervention Project.

Therapeutic visitation designed to help reduce the incidence of post-release domestic
violence among families of formerly incarcerated parents, and thus reduce exposure of
children of those families to that particular source of trauma. Project IMPACT (Importance
of Parents and Children Together) has offered these services for the families of men
imprisoned at New Mexico's Las Lunas Correctional Facility.

Community-based mother-infant correctional programs to foster maternal bonding, provide
a stable placement during infancy and early childhood, and increase the rate of family
preservation. The model California Mother-Infant Care (MIC) Program is conducted by
private agencies. MIC has seven sites throughout the state that allow pregnant and
parenting women sentenced to relatively short terms of incarceration to live with their
infants and/or young children up to six years old in community settings.

Parent-child visitation programs held in child-oriented environments in the correctional
facility to make visits with incarcerated parents a more positive experience for children.
The Prison MATCH Program, started at the Federal Correctional Facility at Pleasanton in
1978 and later moved to the San Francisco County Jail, provides a child-friendly, enriched
recreational setting for children to visit with their incarcerated parent for four hours
once a week.

Children's support groups that provide social support in a structured setting that is
safe for children to express their concerns and to help dispel the sense of shame
connected with parental incarceration. The Parents and Children Together (PACT) Program
offers age-appropriate Support for Kids of Incarcerated Parents (SKIP) groups in the
residential communities that surround Fort Worth Correctional Facility.

Public Policy

Although reported crime rates have remained fairly stable over the past few decades,
public misperception that crime is on the rise has contributed to the development of new
mandatory minimum sentencing laws that have led to the increase in incarceration. The
sentences now given to nonviolent offenders convicted of property and drug-related
offenses are at times harsher than those given to individuals convicted of violent crimes.

In addition, the prevailing focus on the isolated offender systematically disregards
the needs and issues of families, making the profound impact children experience even more
intense (Bloom, 1995). One result of these interrelated trends is the destruction of often
fragile but viable family systems. Some researchers view these trends as an urgent wake-up
call:

...if compulsive behaviors and criminal activity represent relatively resilient
responses to life in poor, violent, chaotic families and neighborhoods, then our society
is condemned to incarcerating an ever-increasing number of the people who live in these
circumstances, unless we can help them to reduce the poverty, violence, and chaos in their
lives (Johnston, 1995d: 314).

As the trend increases to address crime by building new prisons and jails at the
expense of preventing crime through the funding of education, vocational training
programs, drug treatment, health care, and other services, the need grows to explore ways
of developing public policy that will prevent the destruction of vulnerable family systems
(Smith, 1995; Bloom, 1995; ABA, 1994) by:

Using alternative or creative sentencing instead of imprisonment for primary caregiver
parents who were convicted of nonviolent offenses. Options could include restitution,
community service, substance abuse treatment, counseling, vocational or educational
training, and community-based residential sentencing programs in which parents and
children stay together.

Appropriating funds for parent-child visits whenever an incarcerated parent lived with a
child prior to incarceration.

Screening foster parents for their willingness and ability to be supportive of the
parent-child relationship. Training and support services should be available to teach
foster parents and the birth parent how to cooperatively co-parent the child. Counseling
and support groups should be available for the foster parent(s), child, and birth
parent(s).

Providing high-quality services in prisons, including classes on parenting, family and
juvenile law, counseling for survivors of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence,
and vocational and educational programs.

Making available legal services and representation for incarcerated parents.

Passing open adoption statutes that allow parents and children to have ongoing contact
in the event adoption is used to obtain permanency placement for children whose parents
have very long sentences.

Developing law enforcement and child welfare policies and procedures to meet the needs
of children of arrestees.

Coordinating efforts between law enforcement and child welfare agencies to develop a
collaborative, coordinated systemwide approach to meeting the needs of children of
arrestees and incarcerated parents.

Developing correctional practices that allow increased communication or contact between
incarcerated parents and their children, including specialized services offered through
partnerships between correctional facilities and community agencies, such as mother-infant
and mother-child community corrections programs and extended contact visitation programs.

Conclusion

U.S. policymakers, legislators, and children's advocates know virtually nothing about
the approximately 10 million children under the age of 18 whose parents are or have been
under some type of criminal justice system control. Although this growing population of
children has not yet been formally recognized, many are well known to their teachers as
disciplinary problems, to social service caseworkers as foster care placements, to
counselors as behavioral problems, and to law enforcement authorities. The increasingly
serious behaviors of many of these children tend to be regarded out of context. They are
seen as withdrawn or acting out or violent rather than as children reacting to the
aggravated stress of multiple separations due to parental arrest, incarceration, and
recidivism.

The often cyclical nature of parental involvement in the criminal justice system
results in serious and sometimes permanent destabilization of family systems and subjects
children to ongoing trauma. Many of these children will themselves follow in their
parent's footsteps and repeat the process with their own children. Meanwhile, legislation
mandating ever harsher sentencing requirements continues to be passed in a heavily
polarized political environment that rhetorically labels those who support creative
alternatives for nonviolent offenders as being "soft" on crime. Unchecked,
present trends suggest that the increasing criminalization of today's underclass holds an
extremely daunting portent for the future of American society.

Like the canaries that served as an early warning about poisoned air, the children of
incarcerated parents alert us to the grave consequences resulting from a polluted
political environment that sustains these larger trends. It is possible to check the
course of present policy development and its intergenerational consequences, but for this
we need to learn the lessons these children's lives can teach us. As a first step, the
millions of children affected by incarceration need to be identified and acknowledged.
Much more direct work with these children and their parents is needed to fully understand
their circumstances and to develop meaningful responses. The public must be educated about
the families and children who are caught in the "tough on crime" net along with
the individual offender, and policymakers must be supported to seek less punitive, more
pro-family, community-based alternatives for victimless and nonviolent crimes. Law
enforcement, correctional facilities, child welfare service systems, schools, and other
community-based agencies need to collaborate in developing coordinated responses to
affected children and their families.

Acknowledgments

We especially acknowledge: The National Institute of Justice and National Criminal
Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), which provided the most recent national surveys of
prison and jail inmates, including special reports prepared about incarcerated women, and
the latest topical search on Inmates and Their Families (1996), which includes 30 of the
most representative citations and abstracts on the subject; the 1992 Assembly Office of
Research of the California Legislature for their report, Children of Incarcerated Parents,
which provided promising research studies, including studies by the American Bar
Association Center on Children and the Law and the Center for Children of Incarcerated
Parents at Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, California; the 1994 ABA Center on Children
and the Law study for their report, Children on Hold: Improving the Response to Children
Whose Parents Are Arrested and Incarcerated, which helped us understand how the law
enforcement and child welfare service systems view and respond to children whose sole
caregiver is arrested or incarcerated; Katherine Gabel and Denise Johnston, M.D., both of
the Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents, for their report, Children of
Incarcerated Parents (1995), and for state-of-the-art information on a broad range of
issues related to children whose parents are or were under some form of criminal justice
system control, including but not limited to incarceration; the National Center on Crime
and Delinquency in San Francisco, for a copy of their much cited Why Punish the Children?
A Reappraisal of the Children of Incarcerated Mothers in America, and for access to other
relevant NCCD publications; Ellen Barry, J.D., director of Legal Services for Prisoners
with Children in San Francisco, and some of her legal staff, whom we met and interviewed;
and Peter Breen, executive director of Marin-based Centerforce, a nonprofit agency
dedicated to providing services to families of prison inmates.

3. California's "Three Strikes and You're Out" legislation was enacted in
1994. This law sends a person with two violent or serious prior offenses to prison for 25
years to life when they are convicted of any third felony offense. It is estimated that in
1996 to 1997, one out of every eight offenders sent to prison by the courts will be
committed under the Three Strikes law.

6. According to the 1990 Census, African Americans make up only 7% of California's
population, Latinos 25.8%. and whites 57.2%.

7. Vast disparities are found in the arrest, conviction, and sentencing of people of
color. The arrest rate for African Americans is four times higher than for whites
(California Department of Justice, 1993). African Americans are charged under "Three
Strikes" at 17 times the white rate in Los Angeles and 13 times the white rate in San
Francisco (Schiraldi et al., 1996). One study showed that one-third of white first
offenders had their charges reduced compared to one-quarter of Latinos and African
Americans; white first offenders received rehabilitative placements in the community at
twice the rate of Latinos and African Americans; Latinos were sentenced to prison for drug
offenses at twice the rate for whites; and African Americans received prison sentences
one-third more frequently than whites (Schmitt, 1991).

8. Per April 16, 1996, telephone conversation with Denise Johnston, M.D., Center for
Children of Incarcerated Parents, Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena, California. Johnston
(1995b) has also developed a formula to estimate the number of prisoners' children based
on data collected from past studies, wherein 67% of incarcerated women have an average of
2.4 minor children each, and 56% of incarcerated men have an average of two children each.

10. In California, about nine percent of reports investigated by county Child
Protective Services involve "caretaker absence or incapacity," the category used
for parents who are absent due to arrest, incarceration, hospitalization, or death
(California Department of Social Services, 1994).

11. Pregnant women are also at risk for termination of parental rights when they give
birth while incarcerated. Most correctional systems separate incarcerated mothers from
their newborns within 24 to 48 hours after birth (Barry, 1995).

12. Communication with an incarcerated parent is limited by the ability of the child's
caregiver to afford to pay for collect telephone calls from the parent.

13. Informal interviews conducted by Edward L. Reed with correctional officers at San
Quentin State Prison since 1992.

REFERENCES

ABA Center on Children and the Law 1994 Children on Hold: Improving the Response to
Children Whose Parents Are Arrested and Incarcerated. Washington, D.C.: Center on Children
and the Law.

Virginia Commission for Children and Youth 1992 Study of the Needs of Children Whose
Parents Are Incarcerated. Richmond, VA: Commission for Children and Youth.

DIANE F. REED (421 30th Street, Richmond, CA 94804) has 17 years of experience in
health policy analysis, technical assistance, program planning and development, and
research and writing. She holds an MPH degree in Health Policy and Planning from the
University of California, Berkeley.

EDWARD L. REED (421 30th Street, Richmond, CA 94804) has 30 years of experience in
community organizing, program planning and development, training, and technical assistance
for community-based organizations. He also provides wellness education classes to criminal
justice clients.